Everything You Need to Know to be a Mobile UX Designer

In today’s market, research has shown that customers now have more power than ever before. With the ability to reach brands at the blink of an eye, customers are now able to harness this power into actual change. Taking notice of this, many have begun to exploreUX design and become a UX designer themselves, as users really are just customers after all.

However, it’s not just professional graphic designers that can benefit from becoming a UX designer. In fact, the more people within an organization that understand what it means to be a UX designer, the better that company’s design will be.

In this article, we are going to unpack everything you need to know as a mobile UX designer. From there, we hope that you will continue to spread the message and that soon, all design will be based on the end-user. Now, let’s talk about exactly what that means for you.

How to research

The first skill you need to learn when becoming a mobile UX designer is how to research. It’s no longer enough to simply have a goodapp idea, now you have to take that idea and turn it into something that actually works and provides value. One of the best ways to find value within your design is by performing research on your competitors, other designers, and most importantly, your users.

Since so much of UX design is built upon the wants and needs of your users, they will be the foundation of your design. Then, as you begin to understand them, you need to look at your competitors to find what you are up against. Finally, you can look at other designers to find solutions that will make your work as a UX designer better than your competitions. Without this kind of thorough research, your design will not have the same potential it could have had.

How to collaborate

The next aspect of being a UX designer that you need to hone is your ability to collaborate, both with your team and your users. Collaboration is important for a few reasons. First, unless you are collaborating with your users and your team, the design will ultimately have some inherent bias from you. By working with others, you are able to take the best parts from each person to create a better design.

Second, by taking a page out of theScrum methodology when it comes to collaboration, you are able to get projects done much faster. When you may have spent hours on a single element before, by working with another UX designer, you both can get work done quicker and usually with better results.

How to wireframe and prototype

Now that you understand a few basics of being a UX designer, let’s talk about a few technical skills that are required of the job. For instance, wireframing and prototyping. Each of these skills is essential to creating a workingmobile app design. Without them, you are like a writer without an outline and it will show in your work.

Instead, focus on making UX a cornerstone of your design from the ground up. What often happens with designers unfamiliar with UX is that they create something first and then try to add in UX principles after the fact. This simply does not work. But, by building upon a foundation of UX, your entire design will flow more smoothly and come out better in the end.

How to write

Another common misconception about working as a UX designer is that all of their work is visual. Quite the contrary. If you look at the copy of any website ormobile app you will quickly see that the words are carefully chosen with the end-user in mind, just like with UX design. Understanding how to write well is a vital part of becoming a UX designer.

This can go doubly so when you are working onapp store optimization since you are limited to only 30 characters in some places. Part of being a designer means trying to find the best way to use that limited space to say what you need to say, and say it well enough that people will want to buy into it.

How to be empathetic

Since being a UX designer means that you need to understand the needs of your audience, it also means that you need to be very empathetic to those same users. Good UX designers are able to put themselves into the shoes of the people they are designing for in order to find the best solution.

Considering that one of the hallmarks of UX design is to ‘be human,’ this makes sense. Unless you are able to truly understand where your customers are coming from, creating a design that they love can be difficult. Use your own experience and research to learn all that you can so that once the time comes to make yourdesign, you will be ready.

How to create an interactive design

While some will state that there is no difference betweenUI vs. UX design, that simply isn’t the case. However, part of being a UX designer is having a basic understanding of interactive design, meaning, how users interact with your work. Since you are creating something for these end-users, it makes sense that you would spend time on exactly how they interact with it.

Ideally, you will want to start your UI design as early as the wireframes and prototyping. Lay out a plan or ‘flow’ for exactly how your customers will go from one step to the next within your design. From there, you can pinpoint problem areas and test them until there are no hitches in the road. Your goal is to make it so that no matter what route your users take, they will have a good experience the entire way.

How to use analytics tools

The final skill that UX designers have in their arsenal is the ability to useanalytics tools to dig deeper into what makes customers tick. While you can test your design against users all you want, the metrics that come back will tell the full story. By using data as well as your own empathy as a customer yourself, you are setting yourself up to create some truly wonderful user experiences.

And in the end, that is what UX designers do: create a wonderfuluser experience. In today’s day and age, the user (or customer) has all the power. By providing them with an experience that leaves them happy and with their problem solved, you can make a significant impact on them. One that will have them coming back to you again and again.